Maintaining relationships can be a challenge, even with phone calls, "snail mail", email, and social media. In fact, social media - that thing that was designed to bring us together - sometimes works against us and leaves us as disconnected as ever.

Recently Facebook (and soon Instagram) changed their algorithms to suppress posts from pages, such as our Calvary Burlington Facebook page, in favour of boosting posts from individuals and groups. Their reasoning is that a public page is something that you follow, whereas friendships and groups are something with which you engage.

When their algorithms changed, we instantly saw a plunge in the number of people who saw and engaged with our posts on Facebook. This was disheartening because our staff try to post a balance of information that is useful to those in the church family, and that which is encouraging or invitational for the community as a whole.

With this change in algorithm, we could have responded in two ways:

First, we could pay Facebook to boost or promote each post on our page. That seemed like a terrible way to steward our finances, plus it looks a little tacky to have each of our posts say, “Sponsored”!

Our second – and best – option was to create a Facebook group. What's the difference? Well, a Facebook page is open for anyone to follow, and a Facebook group is closed and is based more on a sense of community and shared interests.

What does this mean for you? On our Facebook page you’ll see content posted by “Calvary Burlington” related to information and encouragement, stuff that you can share with your friends and colleagues to let them know what is going on with Calvary Burlington and how your faith has impacted you. And in our Facebook group you will see prayer requests, photos of the church experience, and comments related to the faith journey posted by both Calvary Burlington and the church family. In fact, within the group it is the church family itself that creates the content!

So, if you attend Calvary, we hope you will follow and contribute to both. If you are not yet part of Calvary's group page, send us a request to join - it would be great to see you there!

It is not our intention to overwhelm you with information, but we honestly believe that this group is a tool that we all can use to continue creating community and to build one another up in the faith. If you don't yet attend Calvary, stop by on a Sunday. You'll find people just like yourself - people who don't have it all figured out but who are trying to understand more what it means to follow Jesus.